You are currently browsing the daily archive for March 30th, 2008.
CNN:
…Two of Obama’s leading supporters, Sens. Christopher Dodd and Patrick Leahy, said Friday that Clinton should rethink her chances of overcoming that deficit and consider folding her campaign.
Leahy, of Vermont, said Clinton “has every right, but not a very good reason, to remain a candidate for as long as she wants to.”…
…Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen on Sunday said he thinks the prolonged Democratic race is hurting his party “tremendously.”…
One might well ask whatever happened to “count every vote“? Apparently, in this still close contest, “coronation” rules apply. Sen Clinton is supposed simply to drop out and hand Sen Obama the nomination.
However, should she choose to do that now, those Democrats calling for her to do so perhaps also need to be aware that Sen McCain seems rather unlikely to “drop out” before November and just hand the presidency to Sen Obama.
Leading article: The world cannot stand by while Mr Mugabe steals another election
Thus The Independent squares up. In the obviously unlikely event s**t such happens, let’s see what are some of the paper’s presumably weighty suggestions:
…The international community needs a co-ordinated reaction to a rigged vote. Members of the African Union must take the lead in issuing, along with the European Union and United States, a joint statement withholding recognition of the results. They then need to crank up the kind of concerted intervention, fronted by a high-level African Union mediation mission, as happened in Kenya. Its aim must be to assist the negotiation of a power-sharing agreement to set up a transitional government in advance of new elections. Rich nations must outline a package of economic and political assistance which would be made available to any government of national unity from which Mr Mugabe is excluded.
Keeping this together will be difficult. It was tricky in Kenya, taking many weeks for Kofi Annan to negotiate, and it will be even trickier in Zimbabwe. But there are reasons for optimism. South Africa may well take a harder line; last year’s long mediation attempt by Thabo Mbeki failed, and the new chairman of the ANC, Jacob Zuma, has been more critical of Mr Mugabe than Mr Mbeki was in the past; members of his trade union power base picket the Zimbabwean embassy in Pretoria every day.
If such tactics fail, then the only option will be to intensify targeted sanctions against Mr Mugabe and those of his cronies blocking a political settlement.
Whoa there!, especially with that last option. Let’s not get too reckless.
However, in its liberation zeal, The Independent must simply have forgotten that Mr Mugabe and his cronies have been under “targeted sanctions” by the EU and the US since 2002. Just how they might be intensified goes un-elaborated upon by the paper. Also the Indy appears not to have noticed that Britain, the EU, the Commonwealth, and the US did not recognize that 2002 presidential “election” result either.
Yet he’s still in power. The Indy, though, seems to think it has found a different tack to address another electoral theft: it tries hard to compare Zimbabwe with Kenya. However, Kenya’s recent — literal — electoral battles did not then include an entrenched, long-time dictator possessing a near total monopoly on state power; nor was its “election” held amidst a decade-long total economic collapse.
But, as we know, a stopped clock is also right twice daily. The Indy has actually hit on a new argument. Vital this time is getting African states not to recognize a rigged vote. (Which they did in 2002.) But the real key is not just any African country: it must be South Africa.
Geography and economic influence remains unchanged: South Africa held the keys to the end of Rhodesia in 1979-1980, and it is now all that’s keeping Mugabe’s regime afloat. But, unlike in the case of Rhodesia, South Africa now is under no pressure itself to turn the screws hard on the Mugabe regime. After all, the democratic South African government not being the pariah craving international approval in the manner of the then apartheid one, it doesn’t have to.
Not as bad as usual, but still not much of pay-off. Once more an Indy wind up leads us poor readers into sincerely believing some dramatic revelation will be found by the bottom of a major editorial effort, only for it mostly to evaporate by the time crunch time arrives. Although they don’t want to say so clearly, between the wasted verbiage what the Indy is really admitting is that — short of an invasion — there is nothing really new that can be done from the distant outside.
In the end, no matter what, eventually, he will also simply drop dead. But if perhaps praying for an early death is inappropriate, let’s pray that this time, somehow, this vote ends with him out of power.
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